Ethel McDonald

Motherwell

Ethel McDonald lived from 24 February 1909 to 1 December 1960. She
was an anarchist best known for her propaganda broadcasts on Barcelona radio
during the Spanish Civil War. The wider picture in Scotland at the time is set
out in our Historical
Timeline.

Ethel Camella McDonald was born in
Motherwell, one of a
family of nine children. She left home at sixteen and worked in a variety of
jobs. She also joined the Independent Labour Party. At the age of 22 in 1931
she met Guy Aldred and worked alongside him as an activist in the
Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation. She and Aldred also took part in the
June 1934 formation of the United Socialist Movement.

In October 1936, Ethel McDonald went to Barcelona to represent the
Scottish anarchist movement and show support for the anarchists forces in the
Spanish Civil War. She travelled with Jenny Patrick, Guy Aldred's partner.
Ethel was soon making broadcasts in support of the anarchist cause on the
Barcelona radio station run by the National Workers Confederation. Broadcasting
in English, she attracted interest from the international media and her
broadcasts were reported in newspapers as far afield as in the USA. McDonald
was in the anarchist headquarters in Barcelona, helping fill cartridge clips,
during the May 1937 attack by the communists, in which 300 anarchists were
killed.

After this, Ethel McDonald continued to help support the anarchist
cause in Spain, visiting many in prison and helping some escape. Before long
she was being referred to in the British press as the "Scots Scarlet
Pimpernel". Later in 1937 she was herself briefly imprisoned by a loyalist
faction before leaving Spain. She returned to
Glasgow that November, after a
speaking tour that took her across France and to Amsterdam.

After returning to Glasgow, Ethel helped other
anarchists such as Guy Aldred, Jenny Patrick and John Taylor Caldwell to
establish an anarchist publishing house, The Strickland Press. Ethel McDonald
remained closely involved with The Strickland Press through World War Two and
into the Cold War era of the 1950s. She died in 1960.